Last bits of summer: plum honey wine.
I made a lovely drink on the spur of the moment the other day when it was really hot out.
I took an overripe plum and squished it up in the bottom of a wine glass, then added some of our homemade honey wine and a few crushed mint leaves. It tasted like summer.
Honey wine is incredibly easy to make. Just mix 1 part honey with 3 parts water and let it sit out in a crock for a few days, stirring often. (A towel over the top keeps the critters out.) After it starts to bubble and foam, put it in a jug with an airlock and wait.
You can start tasting it after a month or so. For the first few months, it will still be quite sweet — in the style of T’ej, Ethiopian honey wine. (Honey’s complex sugars take a long time to ferment.) After six months or a year, it will be much dryer, more like a northern European mead.
I like to taste ours as often as possible — the flavors change almost every day. This last batch tasted like everything from apples to chocolate over the course of its fermentation.
(As always, if you’ve never made wine or beer before, it’s good to read up. I suggest Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz.)
